Sony had a torrid time with hackers in 2011 - first with George "Geohot" Hotz, then with hacker collective Anonymous and the PSN Hack. Therefore, even if a game can run "hello world", it still may never run Half-Byte Loader - not if "critical" pieces/functions are absent. This wild fluctuation is born of different games using different functions of the SDK, or "different pieces of the PSP", if you like. The final step is porting Half-Byte Loader to the game, which can take anywhere between five and 30 hours. For anyone with "a bit" of experience, this takes less than an hour, apparently.
"This is usually done by running a small piece of code that displays a message or an animation on the screen, called a 'hello world'," he explained. With a vulnerable game found, Erwan can then test unsigned code.
"I am now aware of about a dozen games with an undisclosed vulnerability, in the PSP library," he whispered, and some were discovered by "unknown" or "novice" hackers. Luckily, he gets help from the community surrounding his blog. "It can take hours, weeks or months because many games need to be tested," he told us. Then, Erwan makes a special kind of saved game and tests it to see if it crashes the console. Getting it working involves finding a vulnerable game, and that takes "lots of time and some luck". Half-Byte Loader allows homebrewed applications and games to run, as well as emulators. On Vita, "this is even more impossible", as the PSP emulator runs in an even more restricted mode. Many hackers have tried and "failed" to run pirated games using Half-Byte Loader on PSP, Erwan revealed. "I believe Sony fights against Half Byte Loader mostly to keep their image - it would be bad for them to 'give up' against hackers in the very first months of the Vita." Erwan aka Wololo "So advanced that whoever would want to do that would have better luck trying to find more advanced exploits on the console than programming all the code required to load a pirated PSP game through HBL. "Loading pirated PSP games from user mode is, if not impossible, extremely difficult, and would require advanced knowledge of the PSP system," explained Erwan. Half-Byte Loader runs in the restricted mode. The PSP has a security model that uses two layers: a restricted user mode and unrestricted kernel mode.
"I believe Sony fights against Half-Byte Loader mostly to keep their image - it would be bad for them to 'give up' against hackers in the very first months of the Vita, they have to show to their partners (especially video game editors) that the platform is secure, and that they plan to keep it this way for as long as possible."Įrwan stressed that "it is not possible to run pirated PSP or Vita games with HBL, not only for ethical reasons, but because it is not technically possible". "The argument that Half-Byte Loader enables piracy usually comes from gamers who are not correctly informed, as HBL does not enable piracy. "They actually never made any official statement about Half-Byte Loader. "This has never been Sony's argument," Erwan answered. What's Sony's problem - the threat of piracy? Intrigued, Eurogamer tracked down Half-Byte Loader's French author Erwan - also known as Wololo - to find out more. These are features you’re unlikely ever to see in an official PSP game - bless the homebrew community! Now did anyone get a PSP over the holidays who can test this for us? Let me know.PSP games MotorStorm: Arctic Edge, Everybody's Tennis and Super Collapse were all temporarily removed from the PlayStation Store because they were vulnerable to an exploit that allowed a homebrew-enabling program called Half-Byte Loader to run on Vita. The interface is true to hardware drum machines, well-suited to the PSP’s design.
More is on the way in future versions, including a skinnable interface, and you can download Korg, Kurzweil, and LinnDrum drum kits. As the developers put it, parameter locks let you “change the pitch, volume, and pan per step toĬreate moving, changing melodies and effects.” 2.0 also features an extended song mode for arrangement. Not only can you turn your Sony PSP game machine into a drum machine, but now via “parameter locks,” a la the Machinedrum, you can use instruments and melodic effects, too. Billy writes to tell us that the homebrew drum machine PSP Rhythm, previously PSP Rhythm Composer, has added a host of new features.